Den Tandt: Census shows Ontario no longer centre of Canadian universe

Michael Den Tandt, Postmedia News02.08.2012

Ontario is dying. It's a slow dissolution, rather than a precipitous or cataclysmic decline. It has taken years to set in and will continue to unfold for years to come. But the pattern in the 2011 census data is unmistakable and, it would seem, irreversible.

OTTAWA — You wouldn't have guessed, as Premier Dalton McGuinty basked in the adulation of fellow Liberals at the party's biennial convention here last month, that he has presided over what may be a permanent decline of Ontario's place within Confederation.

It's been a slow dissolution, rather than a precipitous or cataclysmic decline. It has taken years to set in and will continue to unfold for decades to come. But the pattern in the 2011 census data is clear and, barring the discovery of major new resource deposits in Northern Ontario, perhaps irreversible.

Canada's population is healthy, with steady, roughly six-per-cent growth driven by immigration. People from around the world still flock here, chasing opportunity, prosperity and security for their children. National population growth outstrips that of any other G8 country.

But the draws to newcomers are now westward and eastward, rather than central. This builds on the results of the last census, in 2006, and marks a fundamental, cross-Canada shift.

In Yukon, between 2006 and 2011, the population grew by a staggering 11.7 per cent. Saskatchewan is growing again. In Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and P.E.I., rates of growth are increasing.

But in Ontario, formerly the economic and political fulcrum of the nation, the growth rate has slowed — to 5.7 per cent from 6.6 per cent in the previous census.

There are two culprits: lower immigration and increases in the number of migrants heading to other regions of Canada. In other words: Individuals increasingly see greater opportunity elsewhere. So much for the appeal of McGuinty's high-tax, debt-driven command economy.

The numbers are striking. In the past five years, Ontario received 95,000 fewer immigrants than in the previous census period, while migratory losses to other provinces doubled. It used to be that Newfoundlanders fled the Rock to chase opportunity in Ontario. No longer.

For the time being Ontario remains Canada's most populous province. Last year Ontarians comprised 38.4 per cent of the population, ahead of the Western provinces (30.7 per cent), Quebec (23.6 per cent) and the Atlantic provinces (seven per cent.)

But the trend is clear, as are the reasons underlying it.

Manufacturing in the industrial heartland, despite the McGuinty government's desperate efforts to backstop or replace it with thousands of so-called "green jobs of the future," is locked in a downward spiral, driven by lower-cost global competition.

The population of Windsor, Ont., once a key hub in the province's auto manufacturing economy, is actually shrinking in real terms, posting a decline of 1.3 per cent in the past five years.

Another pattern: Canada is once again, unmistakably, a hewer of wood and drawer of water. The economies of the provinces registering the fastest growth and growth turnarounds are resource-based — potash in Saskatchewan, oil in Alberta and Newfoundland.

And the rural-urban divide is deepening. This census shows, once again, a slow but steady draining of population growth from small towns and rural areas, into the country's biggest cities. In 1851, nearly nine in 10 Canadians were country dwellers. In 2011, that proportion fell below one in five.

The reasons for this extend beyond job opportunities, and will be well-known to anyone who lives in a rural area: Poorer access to health care, poorer access to technology (high-speed Internet in particular) and a political system increasingly weighted toward the interests of urbanites, as reflected most obviously in the Ontario government's Green Energy Act.

But the biggest change of all, reflected in the census, is simply this: Alberta, which was already moving into the driver's seat in the previous census, is now firmly there. Calgary, the country's fastest-growing major city, will soon overtake Ottawa as the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.

For the first time, the Western provinces — the Prairies and B.C. — together have a greater share of the population, 30.7 per cent, than Quebec and the Maritimes combined, at 30.6 per cent.

The political and economic implications are profound. This confirms, if further evidence were needed, that the political shift we've seen in the past 20 years — from an Ontario- and Quebec-centric federal government dominated by Liberals, to an Alberta-centric government dominated by Conservatives — is not a flash in the pan, but rather founded in fundamentally shifting economic and demographic realities. Of the 15 fastest-growing cities in Canada over the past five years, 10 are in Alberta. Given the projected growth rate in global demand for energy over the next 30 years, that trend will hold for decades to come.

The founding myth of two peoples, English and French, based in Upper and Lower Canada, is now just that — a myth. There's a new sheriff in town. It wears a Stetson.

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Den Tandt: Census shows Ontario no longer centre of Canadian universe

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